4. March 2022

The military invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing cyberwar made it abundantly clear, that the application of the International Law and the International Humanitarian Law in the Cyberspace and the making of International Norms for Responsible State Behaviour legally binding, are of utmost importance.

Equally, new accountability mechanisms at the UN and elsewhere for holding perpetrators of international law and norms in the cyberspace accountable are urgently needed.

That is why ICT4Peace has called for an International code of conduct since 2011 and subsequently supported the efforts to develop International Norms of Responsible State Behaviour, inter alia with the preparation of this first Commentary published by UN ODA in 2017.

In 2019 ICT4Peace  launched at the UN OEWG a public Call to Governments on Critical Infrastructure and Offensive Cyber Operations:

ICT4Peace calls upon governments, especially those possessing offensive cyber capabilities, to publicly confirm that they will respect the norm prohibiting cyber operations directed at critical infrastructure. This will provide a proactive means of assuring the international community that these states are committed to acting in a responsible manner in cyberspace.

Of equal importance is to introduce robust State-lead Accountability Measures for the Cyberspace, and that is why ICT4Peace proposed to the UN OEWG in 2019 the “States Cyber Peer Review Mechanism” for state-conducted foreign cyber operations

Finally, ICT4Peace has been supporting the implementation of the UN GGE Norms and the findings of the UN OEWG through Global Cybersecurity Policy and Diplomacy  Capacity Building programs of the ICT4Peace Academy.

Please find attached the compilation of ICT4Peace inputs to and comments on the UN OEWG 2019 – 2021.

And  the Submission by ICT4Peace to the Open-Ended Working Group (OEWG) on security of and in the use of information and communications technologies 2021-20251.